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("Untitled", Mark Rothko.)
In art, we talk about an artist being subject to the limitations of his medium. From the moment he picks up a paint brush instead of a camera, mixes pigments to create oil paint instead of tempera, or chooses clay instead of marble to sculpt a figure, the artist is responsible for manipulating his materials to convey his vision or point of view. Sometimes a flaw in the marble or the slip of the paintbrush compromises the artist's original composition, but the manipulations, and therefore possibilities, are endless.
With writing, it's just not so.
Words, as I have recently discovered, are much more limiting than any kind of paint or any choice of marble. When a writer can't find the right ones to express how he feels, he doesn't have the right to rearrange the alphabet and conjure up new ones: instead, he must carefully compromise his feelings to match the rules and regulations of language. If the writer finds a word from a different language that better encapsulates how he feels, he's subject to the limitations of his orignal language's elasticity. Languages, while flexible, are not a "mix-and-match" media. Where in art, there are no rules- with words, rules apply. Silence, according to Rothko, "is so accurate."
Oh, how accurate it is.
Words adequate enough to capture the rise and fall of my emotions have been elusive at best. There is no word precise enough to describe the panic-induced collapse of my chest following the first report of casualties, no sentence construction evocative enough to capture and reproduce the ebb and flow of my emotions, no single idea strong enough to express the horror of finding out a friend jumped from a window to save her own life. I have been silent, but not silenced.
When I was 7 years old, I found a book in a closet written about the assassination of President Kennedy. While I was reading the book, I had no understanding of when the event took place, just that it was very sad, and that the pretty President's wife was wearing a nice pink hat. After I was finished with the book, I couldn't believe that something like this had ever taken place in my country. Upon finishing, I immediately stood up and proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance as with all of the meaning that my little heart would let me. When I got home, I peppered my Grandma with questions about the assassination: I asked her where she was when she had heard the news, how old she was when it happened, what she was doing when she found out about it, and who she had voted for when he was up for election. In recalling my own flood of questions about Kennedy's assassination, I can't help asking myself how I will explain this to my children. It is said that every generation has its own "where were you when it happened?" event: in my life, this makes two, with the first being September 11th.
So how exactly will I explain this to my children?
At this point, I have years (at least 8) to prepare myself- but if they're anything like me, they will have questions, many questions after they discover that Mommy went to Virginia Tech, and something very bad happened there. Will I tell them how a brave friend jumped out of a window to escape the shooter? Will I tell them how Mommy's friends had classes with the shooter, how Mommy's close friend lived only two floors above him when everything unfolded? Will my words, my memories accurately describe what happened? I haven't figured out the details, but I have kept everything that I could get my hands on to document this for me and for them. If nothing, I can tell them that someone I adore beyond belief came to save me from my deepest fears and from my profund sadness. I can tell them that before they were born, I was thinking about them and the questions they might have. Before they were born, I cared enough about their questions to save everything I could so that they could examine it themselves, so that they could make up their own minds about what happened here.
But what, exactly, did happen here?
Depending on who is asked, the answer varies. Police officers have been gathering and analyzing evidence. Journalists have been pointing cameras at mourning students and poking questions at them for weeks. The Governor of Virginia has created a commission to review the facts of the case, and even closed the loophole that allowed the shooter access to a firearm in the first place. Furthermore, politicians have questioned gun control laws, advocates have proported that violence in video games is to blame, and the gadflies have said that the university's lack of response system was responsible for the deaths in Norris Hall. The only facts that we can agree on are that the shooter was mentally ill, that he killed 32 people, students and professors, and then himself. We know how he obtained his weapons, and through his words, how he perceived the world. To those decrying our system, criticizing our police department and our university president, pointing fingers at gun control laws and championing their video game violence theories- please, shut up. This tragedy is not bourne from politics, censorship, or systematic incompetence. It speaks of mental imbalance.
The key to understanding the "what" and the "why" isn't going to be found in any political agenda: the answer lies in the shooter's inherent mental illness. It is evident that the shooter, perhaps since childhood, suffered from a psychological disorder that skewed his perception of reality, thus driving him to do what he did. If someone is adequately disturbed enough to contrive such a cruel, murderous plan, to break the ultimate rule and commit the ultimate sin, there is little anyone can do to stop him from completing it. Obstacles can be circumvented. Whether they are gun control laws or bans on the possession of firearms in a dorm, if there is will, there is a way; if someone is unsettled enough to plan on killing thirty two other people, it's evident that illegally obtaining a weapon or a shirking firearm ban isn't going to stop him from executing his plans. There is something to be said for the power of determination. The shooter was determined to change the world as he saw it, and to end his suffering. Sadly, killing himself was not sufficient enough to quell his suffering: he took 32 innocent lives, stealing away from us some of the most amazing, innocent, accomplished, dynamic, and promising individuals the world had to offer.
But we are more determined.
A professor by the name of Brian Cloyd lost his daughter, Austin, on that cold April morning. Austin, an international studies major, was known for her interest in the peace process, wanting to one day become a diplomat. When the time came to regroup and contact his students about finishing the semester, he sent them a simple e-mail with their "last assignment" from him. Go home, he told his students, go home and spend time with your families and your loved ones, go and make memories with them. Make memories with them because you never know when they'll be taken from you, and when they're gone, all you will have left of them is those memories. Let this be the most important lesson you take away from my class. Make memories of laughter, so that when your loved ones are taken away, the memory of their laughter interrupts your mourning silence.
Reminiscing is when my silence is most befitting. Every day I remember those I knew, and those I wasn't lucky enough to know. All of their names echo in my mind. I wonder how their parents, their spouses, their families are coping. I think of how easily I could have been any of those students. I think of how my world has changed in those nine minutes. I think of that friend overcoming her fear of heights and jumping to avoid almost certain death. I remember the calm silence of the vigil, the sea of lights around me. I remember loving arms wrapped around me, supporting and protecting me when I needed it most. I see the open and broken windows in my mind's eye. I see the blood stains on the sidewalk with the yellow police tape flickering in the breeze. The silence is only broken when falling tears turn into inconsolable sobs, when I'm alone and that incomprehensibility sets in again.
That silence, when I can hear the tears fall... that silence is so accurate.
In art, we talk about an artist being subject to the limitations of his medium. From the moment he picks up a paint brush instead of a camera, mixes pigments to create oil paint instead of tempera, or chooses clay instead of marble to sculpt a figure, the artist is responsible for manipulating his materials to convey his vision or point of view. Sometimes a flaw in the marble or the slip of the paintbrush compromises the artist's original composition, but the manipulations, and therefore possibilities, are endless.
With writing, it's just not so.
Words, as I have recently discovered, are much more limiting than any kind of paint or any choice of marble. When a writer can't find the right ones to express how he feels, he doesn't have the right to rearrange the alphabet and conjure up new ones: instead, he must carefully compromise his feelings to match the rules and regulations of language. If the writer finds a word from a different language that better encapsulates how he feels, he's subject to the limitations of his orignal language's elasticity. Languages, while flexible, are not a "mix-and-match" media. Where in art, there are no rules- with words, rules apply. Silence, according to Rothko, "is so accurate."
Oh, how accurate it is.
Words adequate enough to capture the rise and fall of my emotions have been elusive at best. There is no word precise enough to describe the panic-induced collapse of my chest following the first report of casualties, no sentence construction evocative enough to capture and reproduce the ebb and flow of my emotions, no single idea strong enough to express the horror of finding out a friend jumped from a window to save her own life. I have been silent, but not silenced.
When I was 7 years old, I found a book in a closet written about the assassination of President Kennedy. While I was reading the book, I had no understanding of when the event took place, just that it was very sad, and that the pretty President's wife was wearing a nice pink hat. After I was finished with the book, I couldn't believe that something like this had ever taken place in my country. Upon finishing, I immediately stood up and proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance as with all of the meaning that my little heart would let me. When I got home, I peppered my Grandma with questions about the assassination: I asked her where she was when she had heard the news, how old she was when it happened, what she was doing when she found out about it, and who she had voted for when he was up for election. In recalling my own flood of questions about Kennedy's assassination, I can't help asking myself how I will explain this to my children. It is said that every generation has its own "where were you when it happened?" event: in my life, this makes two, with the first being September 11th.
So how exactly will I explain this to my children?
At this point, I have years (at least 8) to prepare myself- but if they're anything like me, they will have questions, many questions after they discover that Mommy went to Virginia Tech, and something very bad happened there. Will I tell them how a brave friend jumped out of a window to escape the shooter? Will I tell them how Mommy's friends had classes with the shooter, how Mommy's close friend lived only two floors above him when everything unfolded? Will my words, my memories accurately describe what happened? I haven't figured out the details, but I have kept everything that I could get my hands on to document this for me and for them. If nothing, I can tell them that someone I adore beyond belief came to save me from my deepest fears and from my profund sadness. I can tell them that before they were born, I was thinking about them and the questions they might have. Before they were born, I cared enough about their questions to save everything I could so that they could examine it themselves, so that they could make up their own minds about what happened here.
But what, exactly, did happen here?
Depending on who is asked, the answer varies. Police officers have been gathering and analyzing evidence. Journalists have been pointing cameras at mourning students and poking questions at them for weeks. The Governor of Virginia has created a commission to review the facts of the case, and even closed the loophole that allowed the shooter access to a firearm in the first place. Furthermore, politicians have questioned gun control laws, advocates have proported that violence in video games is to blame, and the gadflies have said that the university's lack of response system was responsible for the deaths in Norris Hall. The only facts that we can agree on are that the shooter was mentally ill, that he killed 32 people, students and professors, and then himself. We know how he obtained his weapons, and through his words, how he perceived the world. To those decrying our system, criticizing our police department and our university president, pointing fingers at gun control laws and championing their video game violence theories- please, shut up. This tragedy is not bourne from politics, censorship, or systematic incompetence. It speaks of mental imbalance.
The key to understanding the "what" and the "why" isn't going to be found in any political agenda: the answer lies in the shooter's inherent mental illness. It is evident that the shooter, perhaps since childhood, suffered from a psychological disorder that skewed his perception of reality, thus driving him to do what he did. If someone is adequately disturbed enough to contrive such a cruel, murderous plan, to break the ultimate rule and commit the ultimate sin, there is little anyone can do to stop him from completing it. Obstacles can be circumvented. Whether they are gun control laws or bans on the possession of firearms in a dorm, if there is will, there is a way; if someone is unsettled enough to plan on killing thirty two other people, it's evident that illegally obtaining a weapon or a shirking firearm ban isn't going to stop him from executing his plans. There is something to be said for the power of determination. The shooter was determined to change the world as he saw it, and to end his suffering. Sadly, killing himself was not sufficient enough to quell his suffering: he took 32 innocent lives, stealing away from us some of the most amazing, innocent, accomplished, dynamic, and promising individuals the world had to offer.
But we are more determined.
A professor by the name of Brian Cloyd lost his daughter, Austin, on that cold April morning. Austin, an international studies major, was known for her interest in the peace process, wanting to one day become a diplomat. When the time came to regroup and contact his students about finishing the semester, he sent them a simple e-mail with their "last assignment" from him. Go home, he told his students, go home and spend time with your families and your loved ones, go and make memories with them. Make memories with them because you never know when they'll be taken from you, and when they're gone, all you will have left of them is those memories. Let this be the most important lesson you take away from my class. Make memories of laughter, so that when your loved ones are taken away, the memory of their laughter interrupts your mourning silence.
Reminiscing is when my silence is most befitting. Every day I remember those I knew, and those I wasn't lucky enough to know. All of their names echo in my mind. I wonder how their parents, their spouses, their families are coping. I think of how easily I could have been any of those students. I think of how my world has changed in those nine minutes. I think of that friend overcoming her fear of heights and jumping to avoid almost certain death. I remember the calm silence of the vigil, the sea of lights around me. I remember loving arms wrapped around me, supporting and protecting me when I needed it most. I see the open and broken windows in my mind's eye. I see the blood stains on the sidewalk with the yellow police tape flickering in the breeze. The silence is only broken when falling tears turn into inconsolable sobs, when I'm alone and that incomprehensibility sets in again.
That silence, when I can hear the tears fall... that silence is so accurate.
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